


Waiting Game

by goldarrow



Series: Animal Clan AU [3]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 02:08:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20399917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldarrow/pseuds/goldarrow
Summary: Nick and Stephen make the best of it on the other side of the anomaly as they wait for it to reopen.





	Waiting Game

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Anyone and anything recognisable as from Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures. I mean no harm, I make no profit except satisfaction. I promise to return everyone in pristine condition once I’m done with them.

"Oh, bloody hell," was the only thought that Stephen could find headroom for.

He and Professor Cutter had gone through that eerie circling cloud to find out where Helen Cutter had disappeared to a year ago, and they’d ended up here. Then the damned cloud had disappeared on them, leaving them stranded. They were somewhere - somewhen, maybe? Those ferns looked like the plants he'd seen on Walking With Dinosaurs, or in the references he'd been studying recently - that certainly wasn’t the same world they'd just come from.

He glanced over at the man standing beside him. Cutter had a horrified expression on his face, his eyes wide, mouth agape, and freckles standing out strongly against his ashen skin.

"Damn," Cutter whispered, sounding simultaneously awed and terrified.

"Where are we?" Stephen asked, but with not a lot of hope that Cutter would be able to enlighten him.

"How the hell should I know?" Cutter snapped back.

After the spiteful remarks Cutter had subjected him to over the last couple of days, that sharp tone of voice didn't faze Stephen at all. He was, sadly enough, used to it by now. He shrugged. "Just a verbalisation of my 'holy shit' thoughts," he said quietly. "The bigger question is: will the Portal open again?"

"It did before," Cutter stated.

Rather than remark that Cutter was pointing out the bleeding obvious, Stephen shivered. "It's pretty chilly. Let's see if there's any place a little more sheltered where we can still see the place the Portal should open."

Cutter nodded, slightly reluctantly to Stephen’s belief, although he did say, "Good idea."

They both looked around. What met their eyes wasn't the most prepossessing of sights. Open spaces, a few basic trees, and a lot of ferns, large and small. The trees were widely spaced and being rather spindly would be useless as windbreaks, and the ferns were waving in the wind in a manner not really conducive to breaking up the gusts of what was now rather cold air that were making Stephen's arms roughen with goosebumps, even through his coat.

"Well, that isn't good," Cutter said unhappily, his light jacket flapping in the gusts.

Stephen shrugged. "If we can take some of the ferns and weave them into the others, it should help break some of the wind."

"Not a bad idea." Cutter actually sounded impressed.

"My conservation work took me to some odd places," Stephen explained absently as he turned in a circle. "Over there. That's a good spot." He pointed to their right. "The ferns are closer together and we can make a tighter windbreak."

Cutter gave a firm nod and pulled out his pocketknife. "Right. I'll cut, you carry."

Stephen bit back a chuckle. He wasn't sure whether Cutter didn't want him to have a weapon or whether the professor simply didn't want to have to do the carrying, but since he seemed to be in a fairly good mood at the moment, Stephen didn't want to do anything to break it. Even if he did end up feeling a bit like a pack animal by the time they reached the place he'd chosen.

Taking the lead in windbreak assembly, Stephen dropped his armful of ferns and picked up one of the larger fronds. Holding it by the stem end, he started weaving it back and forth between a few of the closer growing ferns on the side the wind was gusting from. Once he had that one woven in, he pressed it down like working a weaving loom. Cutter grasped the idea quickly, and wove another one above that, in the opposite direction. 

Stephen nodded. "Good," he said with a quick smile, and Cutter grinned back, before seeming to remember he was supposed to be angry and chopping it off.

Sighing as he wondered whether the professor would ever even consider getting over his sense of betrayal, Stephen returned to work and made quick progress toward a decent windbreak, curving the edges forward to stop the wind from curling around. Once he'd made as tight a curving wall as he could, he stepped back and examined it. Moving back and forth across the length, he felt for any place that wind might be breaking through. There was nothing. It was tight.

"Okay," he said quietly. "That should do, for a while, at least. If it blows up to a gale we're sunk, though."

Cutter walked up next to him, shivering slightly. In contrast to Stephen who was wearing a coat, Cutter's thin jacket wasn't providing much protection. 

"Let's get inside," Cutter said. "This wind is too sharp for my taste."

"It is a bit chilly," Stephen agreed. "You first." When Cutter opened his mouth to argue the point, Stephen gave him a little shove. "My coat is heavier. I'm better to act as an extra windbreak for you on this side."

Cutter nodded, reluctance clear in every line of his body. 

"I know you don't want to feel obligated to me," Stephen said shortly. "But you can bloody well put up with it. I admit it. I made a bitch of a mistake. But it was once only, and it wasn't my idea. You might despise me for it, but you can't get past the fact that Helen was my supervisor. And she was the one who came on to me. So get over it, get in there, and get warm."

After staring at him for a few pulse beats as if he'd grown an extra head, Cutter backed into the windbreak and sat down, facing away from Stephen. With an internal growl, Stephen followed him in and sat back to back with the professor, hoping that Cutter wouldn't end up introducing Stephen’s spine to the rather sharp knife he’d used to harvest the ferns. He didn't. He pulled away, instead.

Stephen pushed back, and again Cutter pulled away. Reaching the end of his patience, Stephen snapped, "If you keep that up, you'll end up on the other side of the windbreak and that won't do you any good at all."

Cutter subsided with a mutter that Stephen couldn't interpret, but assumed was both rude and profane. He ignored it, pressing close again. This time Cutter allowed it, though his back remained stiff. Being that close to the level of anger that seemed to have been reignited in Cutter wasn't enjoyable, but Stephen reckoned the warmth was more important than his emotional comfort right now.

They waited.

And waited some more.

After a couple of hours, Cutter shifted against Stephen's back, letting a cold draft through that made him shudder. 

"I don't think it's going to open," the professor admitted.

Stephen sighed. "Neither do I," he agreed reluctantly.

Of course, as if deliberately making liars of them both, the Portal opened up again. After gaping in disbelief for a couple of seconds, Cutter and Stephen shared a glance of unusual accord, grabbed their packs in unison, and made a break for it at top speed.

They stumbled through, catching their toes on uneven ground, and looked around.

"Fuck," Stephen stated with wholehearted annoyance. 

Wherever they were now, it certainly wasn't home.


End file.
